Hats, including baseball caps, bucket hats, visors and beach hats, tend to slip and fall off the wearers' heads during physical activities such as jogging, exercising, participating in other sporting activities and the like. Similarly, other types of headwear and head coverings, such as head wraps, head bands, bandanas, head ties and the like, also can slip and fall off during these activities. This can lead to frustration by the wearers at having to repeatedly replace or readjust the headwear, use smaller headwear or tighten the headwear to a point where the headwear may cause discomfort, or completely discard the headwear, in order to continue participation in these activities.
Various mechanisms attempting to improve the fit of articles of headwear have been previously described. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,895,601 to Park discloses headwear having a crown portion and a headband attached to and extending around the lower inside edge of the crown portion. The headband is disclosed as being preferably made of stretchable material and includes a layer of spongy material. The sewing thread used on the headband includes rubber thread and nylon stretch thread sewn together in a chain-like pattern to provide expandability and thereby increase the number of different wearer head sizes that may be accommodated by the headband. With this construction, a wide range of automatic size adjustment is obtained without imposing undue elastic pressure on the wearer. While the headbands expand to fit the head of the wearer, Park discloses in a preferred embodiment that the outer thread that comes into contact with the wearer's skin and/or hair is a nylon stretch thread, and that the inner thread is a rubber thread. Park further teaches that the best results are obtained with the nylon stretch outer thread and the rubber inner thread in accordance with the preferred embodiment.
Various mechanisms attempting to prevent perspiration from wearers' foreheads from dropping into the wearers' eyes during physical exertion have also been previously described. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,567,991 to Holslag et al. discloses a perspiration control device that includes a headband having opposite outer and inner sides and opposite front and back portions. The perspiration control device also includes at least one elongated seal strip applied on the inner side of the front portion of the headband and having opposite ends such that the seal strip will cross a forehead of a user when the headband is worn by the user. The seal strip will function to direct perspiration toward the opposite ends of the strip and thus toward opposite sides of the forehead and beyond the eyes of the user. When properly worn, a water tight seal is formed between the wearer's forehead and the headband, and any perspiration or sweat that forms on the forehead of the wearer is directed to move left and/or right past the opposite ends of the seal strip and beyond or away from the eyes toward the temples.